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#  They Don’t Build Lecture Halls In High School

August 15 2013

Written by Sara Roos.

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![](https://www.citywatchla.com/images/stories/Aug-2013/cw11066r.png)EDUCATION POLITICS - School’s open. And many of the classes in my child’s district public High School have between 40 and 50 students enrolled per period. Some subjects sport more than 50 kids.

Why did we pass prop 30 if not to improve our children’s boots-on-the-ground experience in classrooms?

A recent evaluation of NY’s standardized test score results suggests that one charter chain, “Success Academies” is just about the only such private organization that maintains functional improvement between years. What is significant about their experience, suggests teacher/blogger [Gary Rubinstein](http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2013/08/13/how-to-define-success/), may be the presence of two teachers per classroom.

Association is famously not the same as causality. That said, pitching children into a classroom with 50 other bodies and one teacher does not seem like any plan in any way likely to succeed.

Class Size [*MATTERS*](http://www.classsizematters.org/research-and-links/).

What’s the point of learning, or attending school, if there’s no one there to guide you?

I can keep my child at home at my kitchen counter if they’re to be solely responsible for their own learning. But there is benefit to be derived from learning in a variety of contexts, not just one’s own family’s.

Professional teachers know more about teaching well and from different angles, than I do. Teachers know specialized content that I can’t.

People not morally responsible for the child have a necessary objectivity to their instruction. The influence of the child’s peers is important.

For all these reasons and many more I do not choose to home-school my children. I pay a lot of tax money to support a school system, and I believe in it ideologically.

I am expecting this system to contribute its end of the bargain. I expect my children to attend a district public school with adequate resources, which is a euphemism for …

**A Sufficiency Of Classroom Teachers-** And while we’re at it, support staff as well: librarians and nurses and janitors and counselors and therapists and copy clerks and gardeners and coaches.

Shoehorning anyone’s child into a classroom with 50 other kids is not following the bargain. Because *no one can learn adequately in those conditions*.

And allowing the classroom body-count to continue rising *after* voting in proposition relief-funds, is like living through a bait-and-switch.

*(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at [redqueeninla.k12newsnetwork.com](http://redqueeninla.k12newsnetwork.com/))*

*-cw*

CityWatch

Vol 11 Issue 66

Pub: Aug 16, 2013

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